


October 25th - Witches

by omgericzimmermann (HMSLusitania)



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [7]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 13 Days of Halloween, M/M, Salem Witch Trials, Samhain, WITCHES AU, Witches, some good oldfashioned paganism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-22 16:59:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8293252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/omgericzimmermann
Summary: Kent's mom likes to make him go back to Salem for Samhain every year. It would be a lot easier for Kent to deal with if he didn't have to also deal with Jack and Jack's new boyfriend. Day 7 of the 13 Days of Halloween





	

**Author's Note:**

> I made up nearly everything in this fic, except for the fact Samhain was/is a real holiday, and Bridget Bishop was one of the women executed (?) at the Salem Witch Trials. Nearly every other detail about modern-day paganism was more or less borrowed from Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy.

Kent hated October, just a little. He always had. It was the hardest time to hide. Not because people were more likely to believe him, but because it took more of his willpower to keep from snapping at people that no, that wasn’t how magic worked, and no that wasn’t what being a witch was like in the 21st century.  

That and there was the whole phone call from his mom saying “Kent, you’ve got to go to Salem, it’s only once a year, it’s not like I make you practice on all of them. But Samhain is fun and it’s more or less safe because the muggles celebrate Halloween anyway.”

Kent’s usual response of “Mom, you can’t really claim to be an actual witch if you’re gonna use Harry Potter terminology” had, as always, gone ignored.

What Kent definitely wasn’t thinking about as he drove from the Boston airport was whether or not Jack was going to be there.

They’d spent their childhood playing hockey together, and in a moment of accidentally letting their respective guards down, Kent had seen Jack make a skate out of ice on the sole of his shoe. While Jack had spent time panicking since he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, Kent had simply made his own skates on the bottoms of his shoes, and that had been the end of it.

Then there was the draft, and Kent ended up in Vegas doing a lot of desert magic while Jack wound up in Providence, RI getting to be as traditional as he wanted. They’d more or less lost contact aside from the empathy link they’d cooked up in Juniors. Kent sort of figured there was no need to talk if they could share each other’s emotions.

While Kent drove east to the seaside, Jack was nervous. Kent could feel the foreign anxiety pooling in his stomach. He almost pulled over and shot Jack a text, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why.

Kent got to Salem and found the B&B his mom had booked months in advance. It was old, colonial. Their people.

Bridget Parson was waiting for him just inside the door of the B&B and pulled him into a tight hug. Then she held him at arm’s length and frowned.

“Why are you so pale?” she asked. She pinched his cheeks once or twice, squeezed his arms.

“You know that whole checking for muscle tone thing is where the Hansel & Gretel witch came from,” Kent pointed out.

Bridget smacked him lightly in the chest. “Oh, you left Kit back in Vegas didn’t you.”

“Flying with a cat is a hassle especially if it’s only for two days,” Kent said. “She hates flying.”

Bridget nodded slowly. “And is that boy of yours coming?”

For just a second, because of the empathy link that was now sending him a wave of anticipation, Kent thought she was talking about Jack.

“Uh, no, he’s got a thing,” Kent said, after he remembers she’s talking about Swoops.

Bridget frowned. “What kind of thing? More important that celebrating a major holiday with his boyfriend’s family?”

Kent sighed dramatically. “The west coast covens do things differently, I don’t know,” he said.

Bridget frowned again and shook her head before leading Kent to the room he’s staying in. Their host, though not part of his mom’s coven, is more than welcoming and offers them tea. It’s infused with something – herb lore was never Kent’s strong suit – and it sent a wave of relaxation through all of them.

“We’ve got two other boys staying with us,” their host said. “Up from Rhode Island.”

 _Jack_ , Kent’s brain said without Kent giving it permission to speak.

“Sweet kids,” the woman said, floating the teapot over to pour more tea. “They met here last year. One of them makes the best baked goods.”

Kent shifted awkwardly in his seat and the woman fixed him with a sharp look. Kent couldn’t figure out why until she said, “Is the fact they’re two boys going to be a problem for you?”

Kent blinked at her. It had been a very long time since someone had accused him of being homophobic.

“I’m sorry?” Kent asked.

“His boyfriend is celebrating back in California with his coven,” Bridget said, giving the woman a similarly prickly look.

“Oh! My mistake, sorry,” the woman said. “You just looked…uncomfortable.”

“Yeah because I’m 90% sure one of the boys is my ex-boyfriend,” Kent said. Bridget looked at him in concern.

Their host winced, but they were all interrupted by a knock on the door. Kent felt a spike of anxiety through his empathy link and wondered if it was because Jack had recognised Bridget’s car. Their host went off to answer the door and returned moments later with two young men in tow. One of them was smaller than Kent, honey blond, and exuded magical warmth and welcome. A giant black cat was draped across his shoulders and he was laughing with the hostess. With them, of course, was Jack.

Jack met Kent’s eye and froze in his steps like he had also been hoping he was imagining the situation. Kent grimaced at him.

“Now Jack, Eric, these are our other guests, Bridget and her son Kent,” their hostess said, gesturing at the two of them.

“Good to see you Jack,” Bridget said, nodding at him awkwardly.

“You too, Bridget,” Jack said in his most Canadian polite tone of voice. “Kent.”

“Zimms,” Kent replied, finishing off his cup of tea in the hope that whatever calming herbs their host had put in it would help him. Help him deal with the ex-boyfriend he’d never really got over being here with his new boyfriend.

“Zimms?” the little blond boy asked, looking up at Jack and then back at Kent. “I thought your nickname was Zimmboni.”

“Is that what Mashkov’s calling you?” Kent asked. Jack squirmed uncomfortably, as did Bridget and their hostess.

“Kent this is my boyfriend, Eric,” Jack said. “He knows nothing about hockey.”

“Sure I do, honey, I know what you told me,” Eric said. Kent looked between them for a minute and then stood up.

“Mom, I’m gonna go call Nate before we head out for the night,” Kent said, and then, like a coward, he ran from the room.

Nate answered on the third ring, and it took Kent a long moment to remember Nate couldn’t understand him when he had his face pressed into his pillow.

“Kent, babe, what’s wrong?” Nate asked.

Kent sighed and pulled his face out of his pillow. “Jack is here,” he said.

Nate was silent for a long moment.

“Nate?” Kent asked, suddenly insecure.

“Yeah, sorry, I’ve got to go,” Nate said. “I’ll call you back in a couple hours.”

“Wait, Nate--”

“Love you,” Nate said, and then he hung up and Kent was left to stare at his phone in a mix of confusion and betrayal.

“Asshole,” Kent muttered, and decided he probably should take a nap. They were going to be awake from sunset to sunset and bonfires and whiskey and mead only went so far when it came to staying awake. Especially with the tea their hostess had given him, there was little chance of him keeping his eyes open very much longer.

He had drooled onto his pillow by the time Bridget came and knocked on his door to summon him to late lunch. She sat on the edge of his bed and smoothed his hair back like she always had when he was small. She was much better at spellcraft than he was, and had always sung him spells to make him sleep better when he was a kid. Now in his late twenties, he didn’t let her anymore.

“How are you doing, kiddo?” Bridget asked.

“I’m fine,” Kent said. “The empathy link is just easier to handle when we’re on opposite sides of the country.”

“Alicia and I never did understand why you boys did that to yourselves,” Bridget said, letting him rest his head in her lap.

“Because we were sixteen and in the Q and stupid and thought we were going to be together forever,” Kent pointed out. “Since you and Alicia were best friends and still essentially sisters even though you lived in different countries and so we figured it didn’t matter where we got drafted because…but then it did.”

Bridget smiled sadly down at him and smoothed his hair.

“Well, however much I know you want to hate him, his new boyfriend bakes magic into his pies and made dinner for us before the celebration, so come downstairs and get something to eat,” Bridget said.

Kent nodded, only a little miserably, and then stood up and followed her down the stairs. Jack’s boyfriend, Eric, was glowing while he ran around the kitchen. Kent might have been bad at doing spells himself, but he was pretty good at recognising them when they were in use. Eric’s magic was not the sort Kent had ever seen in practice, the kind that just flowed off his fingertips effortlessly, almost like he wasn’t aware he was doing it.

The longer Kent watched, the more he realised that Eric probably didn’t know he was doing it, or at least, Kent could see how it might be possible that Eric hadn’t always known he was doing magic.

“Did you always know?” Kent asked, leaning against the counter. Jack was in the dining room helping their hostess set the table which was very Jack of him.

“What?” Eric asked, looking up in confusion.

“That you were a witch,” Kent said, crossing his arms.

Eric snorted. “Goodness gracious no,” he said. “No, that’s not something we talk about in the South. I didn’t know until I was moving to Massachusetts for culinary school. Someone dragged me out here for Halloween my freshman year, and then – bam! Someone pointed out that I could do the same magic they could, and I mean, I’ve been studying a little bit, but mostly I just go by instinct. Spellcraft seems a little too complicated. Jack’s damn good at it though.”

“Yeah, he always has been,” Kent agreed. He sighed. “I’m shitty at spellcraft too.”

“But you do magic, right?” Eric asked. “They say that’s what I do. Just like…magic.”

“Yeah,” Kent said, hopping onto the counter and waving his fingers so sparks jumped from them. It was a cheap trick, and not even his favourite parlour trick, but it was fun. And Eric seemed to think it was impressive because his dark brown eyes went wide.

“How old are you?” Kent asked.

“Twenty-three,” Eric said. He said it with pride, like this made him an actual adult or something. Like Kent and Jack weren’t both pushing thirty.

“Ah,” Kent said. “Why don’t you talk about magic in the South?”

Eric sighed and pulled a pie out of the oven. He didn’t use oven mitts, and Kent could see the magic swirling around his fingers while he did it, keeping him from burning himself.

“You want the real ugly answer?” Eric asked.

“Yeah of course,” Kent said. “I don’t know how to sugar coat things.”

“That’s all we do in the South,” Eric said. “And since I’m both gay and a witch, I had to get the heck out of there.”

Kent regretted the surge of sympathy he felt for the kid, because he knew Jack could feel it too.

“The reason no one talks about magic in the south is because that’s what the slaves did,” Eric said. “Voodoo and voodun and all the west African traditions brought over on the ships and up from Haiti and in the old parts of cities like New Orleans. It wasn’t something for white people. Not for good Christian folks.”

“Oh,” Kent said, because it made sense as soon as Eric said it, but Kent’s experience with magic had been himself with the descendants of the Salem witch trials. His mom was even named after one of the women – Bridget Bishop. Kent wasn’t entirely sure if they were descended from that Bridget, but there seemed a reasonable chance. Either way, his family had a long, long history of witchcraft, as did Jack’s through Alicia’s side of the family. Alicia was even part of his mom’s coven.

“But you and Jack, you both had ancestors in the Salem trials, right?” Eric asked as if he was reading Kent’s mind. He probably was, Kent realised. He probably didn’t even know if he’d only been doing magic consciously for five years.

“Yeah,” Kent said. “All the descendants of Salem sort of…stick together.”

Eric nodded, although he looked a little uncomfortable about it. “Jack said you’ve got a boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Kent agreed. “Nate. His family is from Spanish settlers in California, the kind the Catholics kicked out back in the 17th century.”

“Oh, cool,” Eric said. Then his eyes widened. “Not that they got kicked out by the Catholics – just – I mean – it’s kinda cool to know there are witches in all the different walks of life, right? From all different histories and – wow I’m babbling now aren’t I?”

Kent snorted. In spite of himself, he could see why Jack liked the kid. He could do this. He could do this for Jack, he could make peace with the fact he and Jack were never going to be together and he could even like Jack’s new boyfriend.

Their conversation was interrupted by the doorknocker.

“Oh dear, we’re completely full,” their hostess said.

“I can crash on the couch in my mom’s room if you need me too,” Kent offered.

Their hostess waved him off and headed for the door. Kent heard her tell the person on the stoop that they were booked, sorry, so sorry, had been for months, but a man’s voice cut through her chatter.

“I know,” a man’s voice – that sounded an extremely lot like Nate – said.

“Swoops?” Kent muttered, wandering into the hall with Eric at his heels.

And sure enough, there was Nate, standing on the doorstep with a bag over his shoulder and a ball cap on advertising for the Mariners because he had a fondness for teams that always lost. His dark eyes sparkled with mischief and magic and Kent couldn’t help himself when he burst out laughing.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Kent demanded, pulling him into a very tight hug. Nate kissed the side of his head.

“Where can I drop my stuff?” Nate asked.

“Are you staying with us?” the B&B owner asked, looking slightly concerned.

“Oh, it’s okay Polly, this is Kenny’s boyfriend Nate,” Bridget said, blinking at Nate in confusion and sipping her tea. “What are you doing here, hon? I thought Kenny said you had a ‘thing’ with your own coven?”

Nate shrugged and kept his arm around Kent’s shoulder while Kent led the way up the stairs to his room in the B&B. As soon as the door was closed, Kent rounded on him.

“What are you doing here?” Kent demanded, before launching himself at Nate and burying his face in Nate’s chest. The nice part of Nate being a normal sized hockey player – and the only other witch in the league aside from himself and Jack – was that he dwarfed Kent and could keep him safe and warm and it filled Kent with the nicest feeling when Nate wrapped his arms around Kent’s shoulders.

“You sounded distressed on the phone,” Nate explained, kissing the top of Kent’s head again. Kent snorted into his chest, getting a whiff of chocolate and cinnamon that said Nate had made it as far as his grandma’s house before getting on a plane somewhere in the Bay Area and heading for Massachusetts.

“You’re a dork,” Kent replied. He felt Nate smile into his hair and then pull back so he could kiss Kent properly. Kent let himself melt into the kiss, his arms around Nate’s shoulders, and sighed when Nate’s hands drifted down to Kent’s ass.

“Boys? We’re having dinner,” Bridget said from the hallway. Kent was grateful that she didn’t open the door, because his mom might have walked in on him and Jack doing some suspect things as teenagers, but he was an adult now and he had his pride. He didn’t need to be caught by his mother needily pawing at his boyfriend.

“We’ll be down in a sec, Mrs Parson,” Nate said, stepping back from Kent and putting his bag down. That was when Kent noticed he was wearing just a fleece and was not appropriately equipped for staying up all night in Massachusetts at the dead of October.

“You know you’re gonna freeze, right?” Kent asked.

“You’ll just have to keep me warm,” Nate replied, grinning at him. Kent rolled his eyes and followed him out of the room and down the stairs to the dining room. The six of them sat around the table and listened to their hostess Polly and Bridget swap stories about Samhain past and various other exciting holidays.

“Ugh, Mom, next thing we know you’ll be telling us about your favourite Beltane,” Kent protested, helping himself to another cookie.

“Oh, nonsense, Kent, your birthday’s in July,” Bridget replied.

Nate choked on a piece of cookie and then looked down at his plate while his face turned red.

“Are you alright, Nate?” Eric asked, his eyes going huge again.

“Yeah! Fine, just…my birthday’s in November,” Nate said.

The others burst out laughing and Bridget leaned over to pat Kent consolingly on the shoulder.

“If anything, honey, you were born in July, nine months after Samhain,” Bridget said.

Kent grimaced and hid his face in Nate’s shoulder. He could feel Jack staring at him, but didn’t look.

“You see? You see what I put up with when I come back here?” Kent asked.

Nate laughed and ran a hand comfortingly through the hair at the nape of Kent’s neck.

As soon as dinner was over, they loaded themselves into various cars belonging to their group and headed off into the fields for the bonfires. Polly’s coven was pretty good about hosting people during Samhain, especially Salem descendants like Bridget and Kent and Jack.

“So Jack, what’s your mom doing this year?” Bridget asked as they walked across the dewy and misty fields towards the bonfires crackling in the distance. Kent could smell burning herbs but couldn’t identify them. Both Eric and Polly seemed to know what they were though, because they were smiling.

“She found a coven in Montreal,” Jack said. “She drags my dad to the different events over the year.”

“Bad Bob’s not a witch, is he?” Nate asked, his eyes going huge at the idea.

“No!” Jack said. “No. I think he might technically identify himself as wiccan now, but only because his wife my mom really is a proper witch.”

“Oh,” Nate said, and Kent thought he might sound disappointed. Kent shook his head, albeit fondly, and rested it against the crook of Nate’s shoulder.

“Who’s…who’s Bad Bob?” Eric asked.

Nate stopped walking so fast that Kent’s head fell off his shoulder. Kent grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the hay bales set up around the bonfires and forced him onto one before he could fall down.

“It’s what they called my dad when he was in the league,” Jack said. He said it kindly, with no judgement, like there was nothing wrong with the man dating _Bad Bob’s son_ not knowing who Bad Bob was.

“Oh,” Eric said.

“He was one of the greatest hockey players to ever live,” Nate said, still staring at Eric like he’d done him personal wrong.

“Babe,” Kent said, forcing him to a hay bale in the hope that it would make him stop. “Eric is like a normal human or something. He doesn’t hockey.”

“He’s dating Bad Bob’s son!” Nate protested, gesturing wildly at Eric. Eric looked like a deer in the headlights and Kent actually felt a little bad for him. Jack shot him a grateful look when that particular emotion got transmitted across the empathy link.

“Okay, who’s got the warmth!” Polly called to her coven at large as they all crowded around the bonfires. That was one thing Kent missed about being back east: the covens were larger.

“I say we make the guests cook it up,” one of the old women in the group said, smirking at Kent. Kent shrugged because it was one of the potions he could reliably be counted on to make, what with being a hockey player.

“There’s spells for warmth?” Nate asked.

The others looked at him, aghast.

“His family’s from California by way of Spain,” Kent explained, which got nods of understanding.

“Is this the spell with the whiskey?” Eric asked, looking politely curious.

“Yeah,” Kent agreed, taking the ingredients from one of the coven members and heading for the cauldron. He didn’t know many witches who still used actual cauldrons, and he would bet money that these witches didn’t either on a daily basis, but it was Samhain and therefore it was seasonally appropriate.

Kent took the whiskey and the other necessary ingredients and got to work, well aware of Nate watching him with curious eyes. Kent had never really mixed potions in front of him before, even though it was probably Kent’s best skill as a witch.

Absently, he realised that Eric’s baking probably counted as potion-making as well. Jesus if Jack didn’t have a type.

Kent toasted the cardamom pods and the peppercorns, crushed the cinnamon sticks. He added the whiskey, and the ginger, and then finally the woad, turning the mixture a deep blue. As the aromatic steam rose from the cauldron, the local coven cheered. Polly handed Kent a series of metal camping mugs for him to serve out the potion.

The mugs warmed right up and Kent carried one over to Nate, who looked curious.

“Your strange northerner magic is fascinating,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah, take your shirt off,” Kent replied.

Nate’s grin faded and he blinked rapidly. “Wait, you’re serious.”

“Oh yeah,” Kent agreed, pulling his own sweater off over his head. He tried not to smirk when Nate’s eyes flicked across his chest and back up to his eyes. In the bitter cold, even standing close to the bonfire, Kent broke out in gooseflesh. Nate stared at his bare skin for another second before pulling his fleece and shirt off as well. Kent didn’t have to look at the rest of their party to know they were in similar situations.

“Now what?” Nate asked.

Kent flicked his eyebrows and dipped his fingers into the potion, until they were drenched, the dye running down his hand to his bare forearm. He touched his fingers to Nate’s bottom lip and traced a line down across his chin and down the column of his throat to the hollow between his collarbones.

“That’s really warm,” Nate said, swallowing…almost nervously.

“Yeah,” Kent agreed, dipping his fingers again and starting to trace patterns across Nate’s chest. Once Nate was appropriately decorated, Kent handed the cup to him. Nate repeated the patterns on Kent’s skin, and just barely waited until the potion was dry before he leaned forwards and kissed Kent hungrily. Kent laughed into the kiss which earned him an annoyed look.

“We tried to make something like this in college,” Eric said from nearby and Kent turned to see. Jack had always looked good in blue, and he looked great shirtless and covered in traditional Celtic swirls, but Eric still looked like he was about to freeze despite being mostly covered in the potion himself. “It didn’t work so well.”

“Why not?” Kent asked, slipping his hand into Nate’s back pocket and squeezing his ass briefly before sitting down on the adjacent hay bale.

“Well we didn’t have regular whiskey,” Eric said, nestling close to Jack’s side and giving an affected shiver until Jack pulled him into his lap. Ah, Kent thought. That was the game. “So we used fireball, and because we used fireball, we left out the cinnamon, and well…you can imagine how well it turned out.”

“It was the sugar that messed it up,” Kent said.

“Sorry?” Eric asked.

“The sugar was the problem, not the whiskey-cinnamon mix,” Kent elaborated. “Sugar is more or less toxic to traditional spells like this one.”

“I use sugar in my baking spells all the time,” Eric protested.

“Sure but those aren’t traditional,” Kent said. He looked to Jack to back him up, which he did, but not before sighing in annoyance.

“The woad the Celts and Picts used to dye themselves helped keep them warm,” Jack explained. “Eventually they realised if they did patterns painted on by a lover it worked better--” Kent pointedly ignored the look Nate was giving him. “—and then over time they figured out the relevant spices. It only really got perfected in the later parts of the 16th century once the spice trade got figured out, and--”

“Too much information now, Zimms,” Kent said.

“Oh, sorry,” Jack replied. “But if you wanted to infuse the cinnamon and whiskey it would work, just so long as you used honey instead of sugar.”

“I’ll have to try that before winter sets in,” Eric said, snuggling closer to Jack. He wasn’t cold at all, Kent realised. He was just enjoying being curled up in his boyfriend’s arms.

Kent relaxed against Nate as well, his large, hockey playing, spellcraft specialising boyfriend with black hair and established for the first time that, much like Jack, he had a type as well. He was sort of okay with that though, especially when Nate wrapped an arm around his waist and kissed the side of his neck.

Across the bonfire from them, the other members of the coven were equally undressed and clad only in paint. They were handing around cups of mead, and as it always did on Samhain, conversation was turning to the discussion of the dead, loved ones and ancestors alike. The mead reached the four of them, and they sipped, happy to just listen to the stories. As much as Kent liked to complain about his mom making him come east for Samhain, he liked the holiday, and the occasion. And he was shockingly happy to have Nate there with him that year, even if he’d just shown up because Kent was complaining about Jack and Eric.

“I’m glad you’re happy, Kent,” Jack said quietly.

Kent smiled at him over the top of Eric’s head. From their empathy link, he could feel the warm glow of Jack’s happiness as well, could feel it wrapped up in Eric the way it never had been with him. But he was pretty sure the reverse was also true. Jack could feel Kent’s happiness wrapped up in Nate in a way it hadn’t ever been with Jack. And maybe, just maybe, Kent could live with that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> General Housekeeping  
> -Only six more days! More than halfway there! Yay!  
> 


End file.
